Biden: D-Day Heroes 'Are Summoning Us'

President Biden invoked the Army Rangers who scaled the cliffs on Pointe du Hoc on D-Day as he delivered a speech at the Normandy site on Friday, saying they're "asking us to do our job, to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy." He described how the 225 Rangers ran toward Nazi gunfire and clawed their way up the precipice after Nazis cut their ladders and ropes. The heroes of that day, Biden said, would want Americans to fight Vladimir Putin's aggression in Europe. In 1984, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in the same spot in Normandy, warning against American isolationism.

• "As we gather here today, it's not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day, June 6, 1944," Biden said. "It's to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us."
• "They're not asking us to scale these cliffs," the president said, per CBS News. "But they're asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They're not asking us to give or risk our lives. But they are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves."

• "Does anyone doubt that they would want America to stand up against Putin's aggression here in Europe today?" Biden asked. "They stormed the beaches alongside their allies. Does anyone believe these Rangers want America to go alone today?"
• "We must also be the keepers of their mission ... the bearers of the flame of freedom that they kept burning bright," Biden said. "To come here simply to remember the ghosts of Pointe du Hoc isn't enough."
• Biden noted that he was the first president to speak at Pointe du Hoc when none of the Rangers were still alive. A few dozen survivors of the mission were present during Reagan's speech 40 years ago, Politico reports.
• Reagan also called for the US not to turn its back on Europe in his speech, the AP reports. "We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars," he said. "It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost."
• NPR has more on the Rangers' Pointe du Hoc mission to disable Nazi artillery. "It's a pretty amazing kind of story of tenacity and doggedness and teamwork," says Mike Bell, executive director of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National WWII Museum.

(More President Biden stories.)